


We need to talk about Cisco

by PepperCat



Series: The Secret History of Hartley Rathaway [7]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 3 a.m. conversations, Gen, canon-compatible, plot-light, post s1e16, protective and anxious, strangers in the room while you sleep, worrying about who your sister dates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7300726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperCat/pseuds/PepperCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I woke up with you standing over me in my bedroom at three in the morning because you wanted me to <i>stay calm</i>," Hartley said in a strangled voice. Snart at least had the grace to look... not embarrassed. Slightly cautious, maybe. "That was a <i>great</i> plan. It makes me think I've been too subtle about a couple of things."</p>
            </blockquote>





	We need to talk about Cisco

**Author's Note:**

> Understandably, when you and your sister kidnap a guy and he gets beaten up and his brother gets threatened with having his fingers frozen off, the guy might hold a grudge. And when your sister then starts actually expressing an interest in the guy...
> 
> You'd want to know what he was like, wouldn't you? So you'd ask someone who knew him at least a bit.
> 
> Title is from the lovely [@eh2zie365](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eh2zie365/pseuds/eh2zie365), whose fics you should read! I was thinking of using a line from [Keep It To Yourself](https://youtu.be/mNMpZ7hkX3c)", but this is better.

The dream was chess with cards, and Hartley was trying to shake a cluster of aces out of his hands. They clung to his fingers and shuttled back and forth, an endless cascade of ones. On the board, hearts feinted with spades; the points of each scratched cuts into the board. The lights came on and he put up his hands to fend it off, still trying to get the aces off his fingers, then realized someone was standing over him and grabbed for his gloves. They weren't on the end table.

"Hello, Piper."

He was still blinking at the light, but he could have placed that voice among a thousand.

" _Qu'est-ce que tu--_ " Hartley switched to reaching for his glasses and put them on, blinking at the clock radio. He pushed himself up to sitting. Leonard Snart was standing in the middle of his bedroom, looking displeased and holding Hartley's gloves. Leather jacket, no parka, and the cold gun wasn't in sight, so Hartley guessed he wasn't going to get dragged outside for work or threatened in the next ten minutes, but… He began buttoning up his pyjama top. "It's three in the morning!"

"Figured you'd be home." Snart tossed his gloves to him. Hartley caught one, but the other one bounced off his lap and he had to scramble to catch it before it fell off the edge of the bed. "You shouldn't need those. This isn't work or anything. Just didn't want you getting jumpy."

"I woke up with you standing over me in my bedroom at three in the morning because you wanted me to _stay calm_ ," Hartley said in a strangled voice. Snart at least had the grace to look... not embarrassed. Slightly cautious, maybe. "That was a _great_ plan. It makes me think I've been too subtle about a couple of things."

Snart's look went from slightly cautious to mildly irritated.

"I mean, 'I'm so glad to hear this isn't work.'" Hartley shoved back the covers and swung his feet onto the floor, wishing for slippers. "Since it's not work, and since I don't seriously suppose you're here for anything I might imagine in my wildest dreams, what the hell is going on and how long is this going to take?"

Snart folded his arms together. "Tell me about Cisco."

Hartley blinked again.

"...you showed up at three in the morning to ask me about _Francisco Ramon?_ "

"You weren't going to be doing anything else at this hour."

"I'm slightly offended at that assumption, thank you very much." Hartley stood up and turned to pull the sheets neatly into place, putting his gloves back on the end table. "You want me to discuss Cisco. Fantastic. I'm going to need coffee for this."

There wasn't really an argument over whether or not it was important enough to make coffee before getting into the discussion; if talking about Cisco Ramon was three-in-the-morning important, it was important enough that Hartley needed to be awake for it. But there was a sustained glower as Hartley found the jar of instant and turned on the kettle.

"What sparked the sudden interest?"

"That agreement with Flash--I don't go after his, he doesn't go after mine." Snart glanced around the kitchen, crossing to the counter by the door and browsing idly through the cupboards. Hartley thought about objecting and let it go. "Least for work. Sure you're not up for getting in on that?"

" _No._ " Alright, that was sharper than he'd meant to be, but the prospect of coming back to the attention of Harrison Wells was not one Hartley wanted sprung on him at three a.m.. He forced his shoulders back down. "The last time I came to their attention, I had to break out of there twice and right now I've only got one backup plan for getting out."

Snart looked back at him. "You don't think they'd keep the deal?"

"I'm sure everyone from S.T.A.R. Labs that you've pointed a cold gun at would honour it." The water wasn't boiling yet, but it was probably warm enough. Hartley dumped what he judged to be enough instant into a coffee cup, then poured the water overtop. Behind him, he heard Len taking down a glass and opening something; that'd be the wine. Fantastic. "Sure, help yourself. I'm just happier with not being on their radar at all than I am with them figuring out who gave you a line on Dante."

The instant made for absolutely terrible coffee, but it was a drinkable caffeine solution, and Hartley needed to wake up. He had the dragging feeling that he was missing the connective element behind the questions. Snart didn't need to care if he took the deal with the Flash or not; Hartley was useful, but _useful_ was a step below being Mick or Lisa. And the focus on Cisco was odd.

Hartley turned around with the coffee. Snart was looking at the three fingers of wine pretty much the way he'd looked at Hartley when they'd first met; slightly interesting by virtue of being unexpectedly present, but unlikely to be actually effective. Hartley rubbed his free hand over his eyes.

"Alright. Cisco Ramon. Loyal. Prone to tunnel vision. Very frustrating to deal with if you don't follow all the irrelevant details that are consistently cluttering up his brain that he cannot seem to help but share--"

"Piper," patiently but with a bit of an edge, "I asked what _he_ was like. I know you."

"I am not having this conversation," Hartley said softly to the air. Snart finished the glass and poured a second while Hartley glared at him over the rim of the coffee cup. "As I was _saying_ , he is probably both the most scatterbrained and one of the most competent engineers I have ever met. He's short-sighted, and a little prone to getting carried away by his work--"

"What's he _like_?"

Hartley blinked. "I thought I was covering that."

And then Snart was standing in front of him, _directly_ in front of him, one hand catching the coffee as Hartley dropped it and the other fisted into the collar of Hartley's pyjama top--it wasn't enough to start lifting him off the floor but Hartley rose up on his toes and tried to pull back. He grabbed for Snart's wrist but had the presence of mind to stop before he actually touched it, looked down and away and held up his hands.

"What's he like?" The even tone wasn't very reassuring. Hartley was trying not to think about what it'd be like to be hit in the face with a coffee cup. He didn't expect to always be able to tell when Snart was angry, but he expected it to be under _control_.

"I'm sorry." His voice was very thin and he was focussing on the kitchen floor. "I would really like to help and I'll probably tell you whatever you want to know, but I need a little more information because I don't understand how I'm not answering--"

\--the only one he was asking about was Cisco. Not any kind of tactical information, it was... _what's he like_ , that's what you ask about a _personal_ relationship, and he was so clearly _upset_ \--

Hartley blinked and looked back at the man holding him. "Is this about _Lisa_?"

It was a little satisfying to catch the flicker of surprise in those blue eyes. More immediately helpfully, Len let go of his shirt, and Hartley took two quick steps back, fetching up against the counter, and dropped his hands a little.

"If this was a work thing," he said by way of explanation, "you'd be asking about Dr. Snow as well."

"Or I just don't need to worry about her."

Hartley sniffed. "Please don't ask me to believe you'd make _that_ stupid a mistake." Len didn't seem to take that badly, at least. "If you're vetting Cisco on a personal level, you're worried about someone interested in him. You wouldn't worry for yourself, so it's Lisa." He shrugged. "--unless it's Mick?"

Alright, he'd _mostly_ asked that to try to break the tension. Although he'd managed to inflict some fairly distracting mental images on himself. Regardless, Len almost smirked, and Hartley lowered his hands a little further.

"You get why the deal's been on my mind," Len said. He held out the coffee cup, and Hartley took it by reflex, thinking about the fact that what Len meant was _if I can't hurt someone my sister's checking out I get worried_. "So talk to me about Cisco. He going to ignore it? Or work around it, if he gets the chance?"

"He's not going to plan to ignore it," Hartley said. "He's sloppy sometimes, but he's loyal. Look what you had to do to even get the Flash's _name_ out of him."

"Wouldn't have needed to if you shared the STAR Labs files."

"Of course, because you would have taken my word for it and wouldn't have felt the _slightest_ urge to verify the information." Len shrugged and finished the tumbler of wine, giving it a mildly exasperated look. He'd been pouring out measures of it as if it was actually liquor, Hartley realized. Three in the morning thinking all around, here.

Hartley cradled the coffee cup in both hands and tried to sort through this. "You really think Lisa-- I mean--" He drank some of the coffee. "She _kidnapped_ him," he said. "Maybe not legally, I know, but..."

Len shrugged. "Wasn't personal."

"He got beaten and his brother nearly had his fingers amputated!"

" _Mick_ beat him and Dante," Len said calmly. "I stopped him, and then Lisa got Mick out of there. _I_ threatened Dante. She wasn't there for that."

"Does she know you did it?"

Len shrugged again and poured another glass of wine. Hartley frowned a little at the sinking level of the bottle. "Get back to talking about Cisco," Len prompted. "Funny guy, great friend, builds the _prettiest_ guns and locks people up in a secret prison. Tell me about him."

Hartley shook his head. "If you want to know what Cisco's like in a social situation, you'd be better off asking Dr. Snow." He swallowed the last of his coffee. "-- _do not_ ask Dr. Snow. She is not going to answer you. I'll try, but..." He shook his head. The first question Len had asked made so much more sense now. "I'm vetting Cisco for you, which means you can put it on me if I'm wrong about this, _and_ you know I'm not going near that deal you made with the Flash so I don't have to stay out of it. Right?"

Len shrugged. "You like Lisa, right?"

"I get the feeling she thinks of me as a funny chew toy," Hartley said dryly. "But I wouldn't want to see her get hurt, if that's what you're asking."

"So just tell me how dangerous he is."

"What, _personally_?" Hartley shook his head. "Are you sure you're not overthinking this? He works with the Flash. You know, clean-cut kitten-saving villain-fighting idiot who manages to make running around in skintight red leather look innocent? He wouldn't work with someone if he didn't believe they were one of the good guys."

"Pretty sure Flash can be fooled," Len said. "And-- look, Piper, never count on people acting the same off the clock as they do on the job."

"Oh," Hartley said, and then parsed the worry, and " _oh_." His back was to the counter and he couldn't take another step back, but he wanted to; the conversation suddenly seemed too personal. He looked away instead, and thought of how he'd taken it when someone he'd thought was safe had nearly hurt Thea and nodded. "Alright. I'm sorry-- I didn't understand."

Len just looked at him and made a hurry-up gesture, and finished his glass.

Great. Three a.m. threat assessment on Cisco Ramon as potential boyfriend, delivered to a stressed and drinking Leonard Snart. Hartley felt he'd made terrible life choices, somewhere.

Hartley took a deep breath. "I think that at worst, he's... sulky. Petty, maybe. But he doesn't think things through. I think-- I mean, if they did... spend time together, I don't think he'd hurt her. The lying and kidnapping thing, he might turn her down and rejection never feels great, but I don't think he'd string her along to... to suckerpunch her. He wouldn't plan to hurt her as a..." He looked at Len and decided the word _girlfriend_ was probably more than the man felt like dealing with right now. "Potential date."

"He planned to hurt you."

"He's hated me for a while." Hartley put down the empty coffee cup and smiled a little, thin and bitter. "And I'm not as pretty as she is. If-- Look, _I_ very nearly knocked him down a flight of stairs and got away from him when I was in cuffs. I'd have managed except he-- had a chance to get to my ears. Which wouldn't work on Lisa." He took a deep breath. "So I'm fairly sure that if it came up, Lisa could probably knock him down and break anything she needed to. _If_ she needed to. I am _not_ saying she would. I've been wrong about him before, but I-- I don't--"

_Try that again, and I won't make it stop. Ever._

"Piper?" Len was looking at him curiously and Hartley shook his head and pulled his hands down from his ears.

"I don't think he'd raise a hand to someone he was seeing." Hartley laced his fingers over the back of his neck and if that meant the heels of his hands were close to his ears and he could cover them quickly it was no-one's business but his own.

He tried to remember any time he'd seen Cisco in a social setting. The man had been friendly at work--never to Hartley, but to other people--and there'd been a couple of S.T.A.R. Labs social events that Hartley hadn't _completely_ skipped out on. "He gushes when he wants to impress people, and I think sometimes he-- isn't very good at reading when they're not interested? He's pushy that way. But I've seen Lisa shut people down. He wouldn't miss that." Except, of course, Len worried that she _was_ interested. But he wasn't asking about Lisa's bad choices, and Hartley could at least offer reassurance that she wouldn't have any trouble if she changed her mind. "And if it comes to, to digging in emotionally, I really don't think he could come up with anything she hasn't heard before."

Len looked faintly interested. "When have you seen my sister shut people down?"

"She brings me along sometimes when she goes out." Len raised an eyebrow, and Hartley shrugged. "Look, I'd-- he doesn't like _me_ , but I wouldn't be frightened he'd hurt my friend if she was dating him. And that's just for me. It's not like he's going to forget that she's your little sister. Even if he _wanted_ to, to take anything out on her, I don't think he'd ignore _that_."

That seemed to be reassuring. Len smirked a little, and Hartley looked away again. It was a smile that was a little too ragged for him to enjoy. Which he supposed fit, if something was nagging at you until you couldn't put it off anymore, and lost your temper...

He took a deep breath. "If Lisa likes what she's seen of him, I'm sorry, there aren't any deep dark secrets I can give you to turn her off him. She might be able to convince him to do her a couple of favours if he didn't think he was actually helping her do anything wrong, she couldn't convince him to betray S.T.A.R. Labs. I don't know if he'd try to... to use her interest and screw you over, even if it didn't fly in the face of your agreement with the Flash. I doubt it. But I don't think he could." Hartley sniffed. "Cisco's smart; he's not very deceitful. Someone could use him as a catspaw, but I don't know how much they could get him to do."

"You _really_ don't like him."

"He's a slob," Hartley snapped, straightening up and pulling his hands down. That was really the worst of it that he was going to discuss. And even that was overstating it a bit, even though Cisco _was_ poisonously casual. It had made him twitch to see the man in the Labs, all but clarioning indifference to the work, and with Wells smiling at him--

"And you're a snob," and even if Len didn't know he was interrupting, Hartley shot him a grateful look. The man was really looking tired.

"Says the man who thought my wine was good enough to finish," he said. "Did you drive over?"

"Sure."

Hartley took a deep breath and glanced over Len's shoulder. "Look. It's three in the morning," and even not looking at Len he felt like an idiot thinking about saying _I would trust you to walk home but not drive_. He'd had this conversation before, but generally not with people a head taller than he was. "Stick around for an hour, I'll make more coffee and see if I can beat you at poker. Or we can walk over to the Din and get something to eat."

"I'll pass."

 _Dammit._ "Alright, we can go with the option where I try to take your keys away from you because you're clearly a little wound up and you were in my house and you drank _my_ wine and, and I don't think you should be driving." Len was looking at him like he'd stopped speaking English. "And then you probably break my nose or give me a black eye or something equally confrontational." Because _Hartley Rathaway_ trying to physically restrain _Leonard Snart_ would end in a very predictable way.

Len tilted his head a little to one side, glanced between Hartley and the door. "I could live with that."

"But it would put such a crimp into the mutual trust and developing affection that drives our relationship," Hartley said. "Also Lisa would want to know what happened. And she wouldn't get prickly _at all_ about you doubting her judgment about-- about anyone she's interested in."

There was a moment of silence. Len was smiling a little. A very little, just one corner of his mouth. Hartley looked down again. Professional criminals being personally upset were _not his problem_ , dammit. Not even ones that he couldn't look at directly half the time, not ones that he understood because he understood worrying about someone like that.

Three-in-the-morning thinking.

"The Din's what you call that greasy spoon over on Lexbrough?" Hartley nodded. "You're buying."

"Great." Hartley held out a hand. "In the spirit of that mutual trust, give me your keys before I go get dressed."

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, Hartley spent twenty minutes alternately lightly freaking out about "I don't go after his, he doesn't go after mine.... Sure you're not up for getting in on that?" and wishing he'd had a good comeback for that. _L'esprit de l'escalier_ , and all that.
> 
> I am not for one red second suggesting that Cisco would _actually_ hurt Lisa Snart. But I do think that Len has seen people ignore domestic violence when it would make them uncomfortable to call someone on it, and he worries a lot about his sister getting involved with someone who might hold a grudge when he's promised the Flash that he won't touch Cisco.
> 
> The Din is riffing off a location in the movie _He Never Died_ ; it's a ratty old diner that's simply labelled "Din" because the last two letters of the sign have burnt out. Hartley goes there a fair bit, usually when he wants coffee that's better than instant or food that someone else makes; I'm picking away at a piece about the waitress's take on him.


End file.
